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Ninety Percent of Everything

It was a hot day in terminal Kariangau, Balikpapan’s newest container port in top corner of the city. We watch a group of six RTGs working to serve both loaded and empty container back to shore. As container crane there ready to put these boxes into the Armada Permata ship. A Jakartan based mid-sized boat. Then I realized the brilliance of these invention. The standardized boxes that shape ninety percent of everything.

Before 1950s, every goods movement were done in bulk. It’s not until six years later, a truck driver invented a container, in which revolutionize global logistics.

Today, container is as much as twice the population of Jakarta. Which in parallel universe, every Jakartan might build two stories apartment out of these boxes. Alas, twenty eight of them would loss at sea every day.

Maersk, the biggest shipping company in the world has great number of ships that they consumed more oil than all the cars in Denmark, its origin country. It also has the biggest container ship (Panama-sized) and owned roughly half of Denmark economics, beside Lego.